It’s 14 months into my role as a Content Administrator and what a great experience so far. So many achievements and highlights! I have learnt so much, particularly with Instagram.
Milestone – 1,000 Instagram followers
In March we hit 1,000 Instagram followers which was a great milestone at the time, Sam surprised me with a lunch at the Duck and Waffle as this is a target we had been trying to hit since I started here at Empower Development and it was worth celebrating! The food was delicious and the views were stunning! I consider myself a very fussy eater and eating at this restaurant gave me the opportunity to try new things, and I would definitely say my taste buds are maturing as there were a couple of dishes I wouldn’t have even tried a couple of years ago. We all had a lovely afternoon celebrating, discussing the future goals for our social media.
After 1,000 followers, the growth increased rapidly. Particularly after Sam started a series called ‘Career Insights’ which are short videos with people who work in the insurance industry explaining what they do, how long they have been in the industry and something they enjoy about their job. These are insightful videos to see the variety of insurance job roles there are. If you are
interested, you can find them all on our Instagram and TikTok page (@empowerdevelopment). You might remember my blog about Amsterdam; I took some videos of Sam speaking and have been posting these ‘speaker insight’ videos, which have been fantastic for generating new followers. From one particular video, we started to gain thousands of followers and now many of our videos have hundreds of thousands of views!
The next goal is to hit 10,000 followers by Christmas!
Do you think it is possible? Can you help us?
On the 8th September 2023, we hit 6,000 followers which is incredible, we exceeded our target of 5,000 followers in 6 months and we constantly receive DMs from people who are looking to work in the insurance industry. It is great to see the community grow. 
To celebrate 6,000 followers, Sam surprised me with another lunch with Emma at ‘Le Relais de Venise’ and it was right up my street and as an added bonus, I had seen it on TikTok. The restaurant was different as there is no menu; everyone is given the same starter and main, and I can see why. For the starter, we had a salad which I wasn’t too keen on as I’m not a salad lover, but the main was a different story. We had steak and chips and it was definitely one of the best steak and chips I have ever had. If you work in the city or want an excuse to try something new I would recommend you visit. They have a signature sauce which makes the whole meal; it is hard to describe the flavour but it was delicious. It was the best way to celebrate 6,000 followers and I will definitely be visiting again.
It is crazy to think when I first started this job, I didn’t really know what I was doing, I was quite shy and scared to show my creative potential, settling into my first corporate job. I didn’t really know much about social media in a business sense or much about insurance (which I found a big deal at the time as Empower Development is a training insurance company). But now, I can create a post in as little as 10 minutes and I have learnt so much about Instagram, the importance of hashtags, hitting the algorithm and putting out good quality content which our followers want to see and interact with. Don’t get me wrong, I am still at the beginning of my career and there is still so much more to learn and working with social media platforms, there will always be changes in trends and algorithms to be aware of. But it has been an amazing 6 months and I can only hope it continues to progress.
Podcasts
Also, over the last couple of months I have been editing our podcasts for Empower Talks. I have enjoyed learning something new and taking on a new challenge. As Sam often says ‘it is simple but not easy’, and pretty time-consuming. On average, it will take me a whole day to edit a podcast from start to finish as attention to detail is crucial. The next morning, I tend to listen to the episode with a fresh mind to spot any mistakes I might have missed and pick out any key quotes and clips for social media. I enjoy this task, and I believe it is good for me to know how to edit a podcast as I work in Marketing and podcasts are something many companies are doing.
Overall, I have fallen in love with my job more and more as time has gone on and I cannot wait to help Empower Development grow on social media!